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LANSING TWP. - Mike Karl credits the homeless community with helping him survive six months on the streets of Lansing more than a decade ago. It's why he's dedicated his life to homeless outreach.

In late 2004 he lost his home to the bank and couldn't pay his bills. Then he started drinking.

"I only had me and a bottle, really, and I talked too much to that bottle," Karl said. "It took over. It was the worst time in my life. I lost touch with everything."

He managed to keep his job at General Motors' Delta Township Assembly plant, but slept on park benches and street corners. He said it was other homeless individuals who taught him how to stay warm, showed him where he could get food and take a shower.

"I had to learn how to be homeless," Karl said. "It's not a skill that you have. They pretty much showed me exactly what I needed to do, and they became family."

Karl said it took him two years and a second chance from an area pastor to deal with his alcoholism and stabilize his life.

Today that's exactly what Karl's grassroots organization, Homeless Angels, believes in - chances, sometimes as many as it takes to help get someone off the streets.

The non-profit, founded four years ago, provides temporary housing for individuals and families who are homeless at the Burkewood Inn, a hotel it owns and operates. The group takes donations to fund outreach.

The effort grew around Karl's yearly "week on the streets" every November, during which he would spend his nights sleeping in homeless camps around Lansing. He documented the experience with photos and videos that he uploaded to social media.

Karl still works full-time at GM, but spends nearly as much time in his office at the Burkewood in Lansing Township, a crowded back room filled with food and other donated items for the homeless.

Sitting at a desk in the corner wearing a baseball cap, jeans and a black jacket bearing the light-blue Homeless Angels logo, he spends his mornings working to help find shelter for people who don't have homes and encouraging clients to seek out employment and other forms of assistance.

If there are issues, Karl usually handles them with ease, said Amanda Zimmerman, who works with Homeless Angels.

“He can get to the level where they’re at,” she said.

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Mike Karl, the founder of the Homeless Angels, poses for a portrait in a room at the Burkewood Inn on Monday, Feb. 20, 2017 in Lansing, Mich.(Photo: Julia Nagy/Lansing State Journal)